It’s no secret that when I found out I was pregnant this time around, I took a truckload of HPT’s.

For some reason, I was in straight up denial.

After the sight of twenty different double lines and a digital “pregnant” display finally sunk in, I decided to give the POAS marathon a rest.

Until I found a coupon for a box of E.P.T.’s

I had never taken a blue dye, plus/minus pregnancy test before and I was starting to hear via the blogosphere that they were highly unreliable because the blue dye tends to transfer into places that it sometimes shouldn’t, which can lead to faint false positives.

I was tempted to try it out.

Then I found a coupon for a free pregnancy keepsake gift from E.P.T. if I sent in a proof of purchase.

I actually save my positive tests for scrapbooking purposes and even though I always cut off the urine-soaked wick, my husband still thinks it’s gross.

I hardly ever care what he thinks though.

The promise of a pretty purple pouch sealed the deal.

I bought a box of 2 tests, hoping that I could convince my husband to take the extra one to see if he could get a false positive. Not surprisingly, he declined. The guy is seriously no fun.

I took one, got the unmistakable plus sign, and then I sent off the receipt and waited for my free gift.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

Last weekend, it finally found its way to my mailbox.

I was pretty excited. Until I opened it up and saw this:

Yep. Some creep stole my pee-stick pouch. Ripped it right out of the cardboard mailer. Who the hell would do that?

People suck.

I am really against stealing. I am against anything that I wouldn’t like done to me and that is why I never touch anything that is not mine. That said, I was pissed.

Some stupid jerk stole MY pee-stick pouch.

My husband, being the clear, level-headed, reasonable one in our relationship, suggested that I call E.P.T. and ask them to send me another. I didn’t really see the point, and I figured that they would tell me that there was nothing they could do because it happened in the mail, but I called anyway.

Turns out, I didn’t give the nice people at E.P.T. enough credit.

I explained what happened and the lady I spoke with told me that they could not send me another one.

Boo. Now I will never have a pretty purple pee-stick pouch of my own.

However, she did explain that she could send me a refund for the price of the pregnancy tests, though.

That made me feel a little bit better.

But…I still really want my pouch back.

So, if any of you run into my pee-stick pouch thief out on the street, please feel free to give them an ass-kicking on my behalf.

And if you find the pouch, don’t mail it to me. It’s obviously not safe.

They did a full anatomy scan, which took about a half hour and the machine was set up all weird so I didn’t get to see any of it. Talk about a total suckfest.

So I laid there, completely bored, watching my husband play with Bronx. Every few minutes I would shoot a glace at the tech, who kept a poker face the entire time, so I couldn’t gauge whether or not things were fine.

It was a rather unsettling (and annoying) experience.

And at the end, she finally turned the screen towards us and showed us the baby, but only for a few short minutes. We did get see the little one kick a few times though and we left with some new pictures.

This is the best shot we got. Hello, Baby…um…Skeletor? ♥

Then she got up to leave and said that the doctor would be in to do some additional scanning.

That freaked me out. It always seems like the doctor gets called in when there is bad news.

Matt picked up on it too. As soon as the tech left the room, he said, “What’s wrong? Why is the doctor going to scan you again?”

I was actually pleasantly surprised by his concern. I get annoyed with him sometimes because he’s never all that concerned. About anything.

We’re kind of like Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up. I’m worried about mercury and pedophiles and he thinks I’m just a neurotic who watches too much Dateline.

Seriously, it’s exactly like that.

Anyways, back to today’s ultrasound.

I reassured Matt (and myself) that when we had done our fetal echocardiograms with both of the boys, the doctor had always done some additional screening, and everything was fine then.

It had to be a routine thing, I told him.

Thankfully, it was. The doctor said that the baby looked absolutely perfect and is measuring right on target to the day. She also mentioned that baby weighs 10 ounces!

In other great news, the tech and the doctor both confirmed the gender and it turns out, we are having….

When I was pregnant with Kamryn, I bought a pair of regular size 6 jeans (I’m normally a size 0/1) and I swam in them. I also bought a pair of black stretchy maternity pants (aka. huge fat lady slacks) and I swam in those too.

Those pants went to the Goodwill immediately after his birth.

When I was pregnant with Bronx, I got big during the spring and summer months, so I ended up wearing shorts and never needed to buy any maternity clothing. I also only gained 19 pounds with him, so I just went up a short size at Hollister. The sales girl there may have given me a few dirty looks.

But now, I need jeans. And I was terrified that the only things that I would find with an elastic waist would look like this:

Ugh. Even David Copperfield has a name for pants like this. He refers to them as the “Roseanne Barr Fantasy Slacks”.

There was no way that I was going to subject myself to that kind of fashion nightmare.

I ordered two pairs in two different washes and used an awesome coupon code to get both pairs for just a little bit more than the original price of one. (Coupon codes are so awesome).

The pants arrived five days later and I was so excited to try them on. I tried on the lighter wash first and they fit perfectly. I almost didn’t even bother trying on the other pair. They were the same exact style, same exact size, just darker. They had to fit exactly the same, right?

Wrong.

The darker wash was at least an inch longer in length and they were way baggier in the butt and crotch.

I immediately called Gap and asked if I could send the darker wash back and exchange it for another pair of the lighter ones.

As my luck would have it, the lighter wash was out of stock in my size and the representative could not tell me if they would be getting any more in stock anytime soon.

The rep said that she would do some sort of check, a “brand inquiry”, and that I would get an email on Monday letting me know if the jeans would get restocked.

Monday came, no email.

I called the Gap again and another rep told me that she couldn’t pull up any information about whether or not there would be anymore of the “fabulous jeans”. She also couldn’t tell me when I would be getting the email.

This is where my problems with the Gap started.

Both of the customer service representatives I spoke with were super nice, but they couldn’t tell me anything (Except what kind of pants they wore when they were pregnant and how old their kids are and yada, yada, yada). I was getting a little frustrated because Gap has a 45-day time limit on returns from the date of purchase, and one of the reps told me that if they did restock my “magical pants” it could take up to 30 days, and that wasn’t counting how long it would take for me to find out if they were getting restocked in the first place.

Then I was informed that because I was exchanging one wash for another, I would probably be charged the difference between the original price for the light wash I wanted and the actual price I paid for the darker wash. However, when I ordered both pairs I paid the same discounted price for both washes. That seemed really ridiculous.

After my second phone call and still no email updates, I just gave up. I threw the darker pair in the wash and shrunk them.

They now fit a little more like the lighter wash. Sort of.

The email from Gap came shortly thereafter.

It read:

“Thank you for your interest in gap.com Recently you contacted us with a question that required additional research. We were able to learn the following:

Unfortunately, the Demi panel sexy boot jeans (faded medium wash) will not be replenished on our site. We apologize for any disappointment this may cause. As a fashion retailer, we continually strive to create new designs and, as a result, our collections are constantly changing. We frequently bring popular products back, so we will be sure to share with our merchandising team your desire to see this product in the future.”

Thanks for the disappointment, Gap.

(P.S. Last chance to vote on what you think the sex of baby #3 will be! 22 hours left until the big u/s! Yikes!)

I was really excited yesterday when I went out to my mailbox and saw that this had arrived.

I now have a new best friend.

Although, my husband kind of wants to kill me now.

I may have ordered it after he told me not to.

Perhaps I should explain. When I found out that I could buy a medical-quality Doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat at home (and for an unbelievably low price), I knew that I would have to get one. In fact, I started wondering why I didn’t already have one, considering that I tend to indulge in an uncontrollable amount of retail therapy when I’m carrying a bun in the oven.

I told Matt that I really, really wanted to order one. He pointed out that we really, really didn’t need a Doppler. (He’s frugal, so he is ALWAYS giving me the “want vs. need” lecture.) They have one at the doctor’s office, he argued, and we already pay to use that one there. And then he brought up the fact that we have this collecting dust in the bedroom closet:

Ah, the Bebe Sounds Prenatal Heart Listener. Or as I like to call it, A Total Piece of Crap.

But don’t tell that to the unsuspecting couple that I unload this on at my next garage sale.

The difference between this and the Doppler is that the Doppler actually works. The Bebe Sounds thing is a bad microphone that makes a lot of noise and there’s never a discernable heart tone.

If I had known about the Doppler four years ago, I never would have bought the Bebe Sounds garbage.

So, even after hubby told me not to, I still bought the Doppler.

When I told him, he was less than thrilled. Actually, he was pretty mad.

He’ll get over it.

And I can listen to the sound of our little one’s heart to pass the time until he does.

In my never-ending quest to turn my bathroom into a makeshift science lab, I stumbled upon another experiment that I just had to try.

I came across a blog post by a fellow POAS queen who mentioned that if she ran out of pregnancy tests, she could always use her leftover ovulation prediction tests (OPK’s) as a backup.

Say What?! I’d never heard of this.

Of course, I had to see if it was true. And I actually had a whole box of leftover Clearblue Easy Digital Ovulation tests just sitting around waiting to expire.

It was time to let the myth busting begin. I took one, waited for three minutes and much to my surprise…

I found out that we are having a smiley face.

I did a little more research and found out that ovulation predictors look for the Luteinizing Hormone (LH) which is nearly identical to human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), the hormone detected by pregnancy tests. So OPK’s will turn up positive for ovulation and pregnancy. (Note: It doesn’t work the other way around though. Pregnancy tests will only pick up hCG, not LH.)

I’m a little ticked. If I had known about this handy- dandy little trick when I first suspected I was pregnant, I could have just used up this box of digital OPK’s. And then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have had to blow through all of these…

I spent a huge chunk of the day Wednesday in the hospital emergency room.

Because water is the devil.

I hate H20 and consequently, I never drink enough of it. I prefer soda and that makes my kidneys angry. Very, very angry.

I had a kidney stone. I suspected that I did when I went in because I have had kidney stones with both of my pregnancies with the boys, but my suspicions and medical history were not enough for the doctor on duty.

He wanted tests. Lots and lots of tests.

Apparently, my lack of a medical degree did not impress him. Instead it bought me a urinalysis, five blood draws, two ultrasounds and the longest pelvic exam of my life.

Did I mention the attending physician was a young, good-looking guy?

Yep, that was awkward.

Add to that a morphine injection for pain, which sounds good in theory, but made me horrendously ill for the next twenty four hours.

I was definitely having a bad day.

And all the tests came back clear, except my kidney looked a little inflamed on the ultrasound. The same kidney that I complained about being sore.

The doctor still dismissed my kidney stone theory and went with a vague diagnosis of “must be some sort of infection.”

He called my OB and they agreed on an antibiotic.

An antibiotic and a pain medication that I ended up waiting for over an hour to be filled at the pharmacy. Which would normally have just been annoying, but I was still suffering from the awful side effects from the morphine, so it was slow torture.

It just so happens that there was a nice older woman who was being shuffled back and forth from the patient consultation window to the pay counter at the pharmacy. She noticed about 20 minutes into my wait that I was not feeling well and she asked me if I was okay. I thought that was so nice of her. I assured her I was fine and she walked away, but after that she kept a watchful eye on me.

When I went up to the pay counter almost an hour later and they made me wait while they finished filling my scripts and running them through the system, she came up behind me and offered me a chair to sit in.

And then, while the pharmacy tech was ringing me up, I found out that my insurance didn’t cover the pain medicine and because I didn’t think to take my purse with me to the hospital that morning, I didn’t have any backup money on me.

The nice lady offered to pay for my medicine. Twice.

I felt like John Quinones would jump out of an aisle at any moment and tell me that we were on Primetime’s What Would You Do? show.

I was embarrassed and I thanked her and told her I would send my husband back to pick it up later. I was touched by her concern and generosity, but I couldn’t let her do it.

I drove home crying.

And then I spent the rest of that night miserable from morphine poisoning.

Only to wake up the next morning and pass a kidney stone.

I knew I should have went to med school.

So, I called my doctor and told them that I was putting the kabbash on the unnecessary antibiotic regimen.

The trip to the emergency room did have one perk though. I got in an unexpected half hour of baby watching.

I got nervous at the beginning of the ultrasound when I realized that I could possibly find out the sex of the baby without Matt there.

I got even more nervous when I thought I heard the ultrasound tech say. “and here’s HIS umbilical cord…”

I looked at the screen in shock. “Did you just say HIS umbilical cord?!”

The tech looked back at me in surprise, “Oh, no. I said, ‘And THIS is the umbilical cord.’ I looked for the sex at the beginning of the scan and I couldn’t tell.”

I wish now that I had asked why she couldn’t tell, but at this late in the game…I think that a penis probably should have been pretty obvious.

That has to be a good sign. :)

I’m getting my anatomy scan done early by Maternal-Fetal Medicine at the hospital so I will hopefully (assuming baby cooperates) find out soon.

The only thing is, I’m not in the clear yet. I have my next appointment scheduled with the doctor that wants me on the progesterone.

I hope she has forgotten about all that business by my next visit.

I probably won’t be that lucky.

Thanks to all of you ladies who offered up support when I wrote my last blog post about this. I was a little nervous that some people would be outraged that I didn’t feel comfortable with the doctor’s course of action.

I really think that the injections are unnecessary. There are other preventative measures that can be taken without subjecting me and the baby to 20 weeks of extra hormones.

I probably should have brought that point up when she mentioned all of this at my last visit, but I have a hard time questioning authority.